Bengals Kick Off Fan Video Site

The Cincinnati Bengals have become the first NFL team to launch a site where fans can post user-created videos.

The new video site, hosted by technology firm ViTrue, which runs user-generated promotional sites for clients, will be part of the Fan Zone section of the Bengals team site (www.bengals.com).

During a time-out in the Bengals-Patriots game on Sunday, an announcement invited fans to submit videos to the Bengals Web site showing their support for the team.

The Bengals will also send out e-mail messages today to 40,000 fans asking for user-created videos. The best videos as voted by fans will also be shown on the scoreboard during home games this season at Paul Brown Stadium.

The addition of fan-contributed videos is aimed at "trying to get as much traffic to the site as possible and trying to keep people engaged throughout the year," said Vince Cicero, the Bengals director of corporate sales and marketing. He said the organization plans to develop different themes during the year around which fans can create videos.

The Bengals site gets about 16 million unique visitors during the year, according to Cicero. No advertising or sponsorships tied to the fan videos have been developed yet, but Cicero expects the site will eventually include some type of corporate sponsorship. "This is all still new for us," he said.

ViTrue, whose clients include TBS and Publicis Groupe's Denuo unit, is in talks to create user-generated video sites for other NFL teams.

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